Palmer
"You gotta be fuckin' kidding." -'Palmers'' reaction to the Norris Thing Palmer was the Assistant Mechanic of the U.S. Outpost 31. He is portrayed by David Clennon. History During the winter of 1982, the Norwegians were chasing an Alaskan Malamute around the outpost, the pilot was killed when he accidentally dropped a grenade and the passenger was killed by Garry thinking that he was hostile, the crew adopted the dog. During the night, he was woken up by the fire alarm that was turned on by MacReady, he saw an unknown creature assimilating the dogs, MacReady ordered Childs to bring the flamethrower and ordered him to incinerate it. Windows along with Bennings quarantine the remains of the dog-creature and the Norwegian cadaver in the storage room, but moments after leaving, strands of tentacle-like sinew emerged from the remains of the dog-creature and the Norwegian, and proceed to assimilate Bennings, the Bennings replica was then burned by MacReady. Blair suffers a mental breakdown, he destroyed the helicopters, tractor and radio with an axe, and killed the remaining sled dogs, containing further contamination, luckily he along the others were able to subdue Blair and locked him in the tool shed. Paranoia quickly sets in as the first attempt to develop a test using uncontaminated blood samples is sabotaged by an unknown party. He and the others begin to suspect MacReady is infected when a scrap of torn shirt containing his name tag is found at the camp, and locked him outside in a severe blizzard. Somehow finding his way back to camp without a guide line, MacReady breaks into a storage room and threatens the rest of the crew with dynamite. In the course of the standoff, Norris suffers a heart attack. When Copper attempts to revive him by defibrillation, Norris' body transforms and bites off Copper's arms and he bleeds to death. Norris' head detaches from his body and the alien uses it in an attempt to escape as the others burn the body, but the head is discovered and incinerated. MacReady proposed a test on everyone to tell who is human and who is a replica. Clark in an act of mutiny tries to stab MacReady with a scalpel, but is quickly shot in the head and killed by MacReady in self-defense. The rest of the crew complies with the test; blood samples are drawn from each member of the team including Copper and Clark and jabbed with a hot wire to see whose blood will react defensively. Upon realizing that Clark was not infected, Childs denounces MacReady as a murderer. Palmer is unmasked as an imitation when his blood is tested, and MacReady ordered Windows to torch him, but the imitation split its head and maul Windows to death. MacReady manage to kill the Palmer imitation by torching it and destroyed it with a dynamite. Assimilation Given that Palmer and Childs share a room, Palmer probably wasn't the person that the Dog-Thing assimilated the first night. Only the shadow of this person is seen, and to add ambiguity, director John Carpenter used a stand-in from the production team that had an appearance somewhat between Norris and Palmer (big frizzy hair in profile). However, the Thing assimilates people when it is alone and in close proximity with them for a length of time. This would mean that Norris (who apparently doesn't have a roommate) was initially infected, and assimilated Palmer at some later point (probably when the fuse blew and the lights went out for an hour). The Thing is described to rip through someone's clothes as it takes over. Palmer however is shown to have no damage done to his clothing, meaning that he could've been attacked when he was asleep when he wasn't wearing his usual clothes in order to maintain trust and avert suspicion. Trivia *Palmer is Childs' roommate as seen earlier in the movie. *As a nod to the original motion picture's plant-based version of the "cell intruder," Palmer and Childs hesitate in a deleted scene whether to keep their pots of pot or destroy them. As the Thing may have even infected those. *It is possible that Palmer targeted the Norris-Thing's spiderhead to avoid detection. However, careful observation of the scene demonstrates that Windows had already turned his head and noticed the spider-head Thing, in which case Palmer quickly exclaimed at it simply because the spider-head's cover was already blown. Category:Characters Category:1982 characters Category:Deceased characters Category:Mechanics Category:Victims of Norris-Thing Category:Assimilated characters